No more toys falling down from airplane tray table

A good airplane travel tray creates a special place for your kids during the flight. With the right toys it enables hours of a quiet creative pretend play, and keeps the toys from falling down and rolling away. There's plenty of choice but it turns out only few of the travel trays really work well on the plane.

Quiet play time with Snow White and  Dinosaur action figures playset  and Fun N' Fly foldable travel tray somewhere over the Atlantic

Avoid carseat trays!

If the tray is described as a carseat tray, it won't be any good for the air travel. Such tray is required to be sturdy enough to create a flat surface while on the lap, which makes it unnecessary bulky and heavy. Don't let "foldable" and "travel" wording confuse you: they are not air-travel-portable. Unlike inside the car, on the plane there's a tray table that provides a flat surface, and all you need is just a cover with sturdy walls to keep the toys on it.

You also want the travel tray to be designed to fit the tray table. The size matters, but what matters even more is for the tray to be fixated well and move the slightest during kids play. There's just too much at stake :)

I'd also avoid the trays with many pockets full of stuff hanging on the sides. You don't really have plenty of space in your seat for those and it makes it very inconvenient to move through a seat with such tray, for example when someone needs to use restroom. Besides, if you are well prepared for the flight with your kid she will have her legs resting on a footrest pillow beneath the tray.

The travel tray should be:

• Portable: foldable and lightweight
• Minimalistic: just a cover with sturdy walls
• Designed to fit and fixate on the tray table

We looked at and tried a lot of trays, but returned all of those apart from Fun N' Fly Foldable Travel Tray. It looks much simpler than others and to be honest doesn't look incredibly nice on the seller's page, for that reason I would've hoped for the smaller price, but it is by far the best one for the job. It is a no-brainer choice.

Fun N' Fly Foldable Travel Tray can be folded to take very little space. It is truly lightweight, but provides sturdy enough walls to keep the toys on the table. The front wall can be brought down to allow resting your hands while playing. It also has a very well thought through adjustable straps which keep the tray always in its place on the different table sizes.

• When folded, the tray occupies little space, it is roughly 6x8 inches
• It is lightweight at 242g
• There's a strap in each of a top corners and one underneath, plenty to fixate it well on the table
• It comes with a convenient bag for storage, which we used for storing toys most of the time;)

You'll find many pictures at the bottom for extra detail.

Make sure you check out what worked for us on long-haul flight with toddlers before traveling with kids and subscribe or follow us at @aflightwithkids. This post has taken me several hours to create and edit so I’d love to hear your feedback too :)